Video: 440 Japanese American students get degrees - 66 years later

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SEATTLE - The people getting bachelor's degrees this Sunday at the University of Washington will look a lot older than the usual college graduate. 

That's because their education was interrupted by World War II.

Now, 66 years later, they are being honored as part of this nation's greatest generation.

Tama Murotani-Inaba was just a freshman at the University of Washington in 1942.

Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor just months before and 440 Japanese-American students had to leave the university because their families were ordered into government internment camps. Their crime? They looked like the enemy.

KING

Months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, 440 Japanese American students had to leave the university because their families were ordered into government internment camps.

"And to have to leave Seattle with just one suitcase, that was another shock," said Tama Murotani-Inaba.

Paul Kaseguma was a sophomore majoring in business and working nights as a waiter at the Seattle Tennis Club.

"Gee, where do we go? What are they going to do to us? Are they going to put us in jail?" he said.

This weekend, for the first time, the university will confer honorary baccalaureate degrees to the students pulled out its classrooms in 1942, though nearly half of them have since died.

Librarian Theresa Mudrock helped track down the students. She discovered that then UW President Lee Paul Sieg wrote passionate letters to other college presidents, urging them to take his students.

"Some were reluctant, others had a long list of provisos, others said 'sure we'd love to take them,'" she said.

Mudrock says throughout the internment, the UW coordinated placements for all west coast student internees. Thanks to local quakers, Tama was accepted at Guilford College.

An Episcopal priest helped Paul get into the University of Cincinnati. He completed his UW education on the GI Bill.

"I was kinda shocked when they said they were going to give us a degree, I said why would I need another degree?" he said.

Some former students are ambivalent about the degrees.

"Many of them said they'd moved on in their life. They packaged away, I think, that pain," said professor Gail Nomura, American Ethnic Studies.

But most are jubilant.

"This is a wonderful tribute to all of us and I'll always be grateful," Tama said.

The university just re-instituted honorary degrees in 2002. The most recent ones were given to Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama.

Viewers can register to come to the ceremony until Friday. That Web site is www.uwalum.com.

The ceremony, "A Long Journey Home," will be streamed live online Sunday at 2 p.m. on www.UWTV.org.